Alice Magazine NYC - Chapter 1

Palaye Royale first appeared on everyone’s radar by being one of the first unsigned bands to
win an MTV award in 2014. Residing in Los Angeles by way of Toronto, the admirably young
rockers have just written and recorded their first full-length album due out this summer.
With looks to kill and a valiant, energetic stage presence, Palaye Royale has taken the U.S. by storm.
Selling out renowned venues like The Viper Room, landing a Samsung
commercial, and touring non-stop since their EP release in 2013 has kept the trio busy, hungry, and
in demand. We caught up with the budding rockstars during their stay in
Chelsea and talked about touring, inspiration, and the upcoming release of their much
anticipated debut album, ‘Boom Boom Room’.
ALICE: Who are some of your biggest influences music wise and stylistically?
Palaye Royale: Small faces, T Rex, Bowie, Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground,
The Doors, 13th Floor Elevators, The Kinks, The Stooges, Pink Floyd, Black Crows.
Sebastian Danzig: We range in style…for me it’s the 1920’s, for Remington it’s more
grunge/90’s…
Remington Leith: I’m more vampire grunge…
SD: …and then Emerson is 60s/70s/Victorian Age.
ALICE: Nice. It’s Bowie’s birthday today...
Emerson Barrett: Happy Birthday Bowie.
SD: He looks great!
EB: He doesn’t fuckin’ age!
ALICE: So you guys have a U.S. tour coming up?
SD: This year we have 3 or 4 U.S. tours. All bigger sized clubs and small theaters.
ALICE: What are some of your favorite places to visit or venues to play?
EB: I really like Toronto.
SD: Toronto is great.
EB: I love New York. It’s like a labyrinth of architecture.
SD: You actually feel like you’re coming to play somewhere. But surprisingly there were
some cities in Pittsburgh that were really interesting.
EB: We have really great response in the South, because they appreciate rock ‘n’ roll. Dirty
South.
ALICE: So you had an EP come out in 2013, are you working on a full-length?
SD: We just finished our full-length about 2 months ago, we did it with JMZ Hawes
Smashing Pumpkins. We did 13 tracks with him. It’s all in the lines of our song
‘Get Higher’, so it’s really conventional rock ‘n’ roll but it still keeps our big strings and
everything. We just played a bunch of shows prior to making the record so we realized what
works for a live audience and what doesn’t. And having 5 minute orchestral things is really
nice when everyone knows the music, but if no one really knows the music then you still
have to make your footprint. And in 25 minutes you kinda have to play fast rock ‘n’ roll and
be aggressive.
EB: We kinda took from the bands of the 60s where you do live pre-production, and you
just see what people like and what they don’t like. That’s kinda how we constructed our
whole album.
SD: And the whole record we did in 2 weeks, all live trackings for drums and bass.
EB: And it’s entitled “Boom Boom Room”.
SD: 2 and a half years ago we played the Boom Boom Room here, and we were like “Alright,
that’s the album title”.
EB: That name is kind of infectious. It stuck with us for some reason.
ALICE: So when is that supposed to come out?
EB: It’s been changing.
SD: We just signed with a record label, so it’s been kind of up in the air. But now we have
management that actually has a plan to put it out right before we go on tour in the summer.
So we’re probably going to have 4 singles come out before that
EB: And one of them is with Kellin Quinn from Sleeping With Sirens.
SD: The good thing is that we’ve always kept our aesthetic. We’re releasing art films for
everything that we’re putting out there music wise.
EB: We’re obsessed with 1920s films, weird experimental films, and films from the 60s. We
put out that imagery for people to see what we want them to see when they hear our music.
It goes hand in hand, like what The Velvet Underground did…cinema, fashion, art.
ALICE: You call yourselves a “fashion art rock band”…
EB: I think you have to categorize yourselves as something
SD: Sometimes we have the label saying, “just call yourselves a rock band”, but rock can
range from so many different tones of music. You could sounds like the Temples or you
could sound like Creed or Nickelback…and that’s the problem…when people think rock
it’s that. Sometimes you just have to put a title to it so kids really understand what you’re
doing.
ALICE: I feel like there is definitely more of a visual element to what you guys do.
SD: Exactly.
ALICE: Touching on the subject of social media…do you feel like it helps you or hurts you?
SD: You have to live in this world but you have to treat it as a tool, so you can be really
creative with it, but also you can get really lost in allowing that to overtake your whole entire
band, and that’s the only thing you have is social media. You still have to have the human
connection of going out and meeting people. For the longest time we’d still pass out
fliers, and that’s how we’d get people to come to our shows. Just because someone likes a
picture on facebook doesn’t mean they’re gonna show up at the show or buy your record.
And people think that’s the only way to sell it, and it’s completely backwards…you still
have to talk to people, and you still have to go out of your way and play in front of people.
You can’t put out a youtube cover video and be like, “that’s me live!”, because that’s not a
really good way of feeling the experience of a live performance.